Happy Accidents

[Another “fun” one from the past. I promise, some day I’m going to write about a place I actually enjoyed living at.]

‘Shut up, you fucking bitch!’

I had actually held out hope that after our neighbor kicked out her abusive man that things would change. Possibly, even, for the better! Unfortunately I was wrong. It appears that even with half the troubled relationship gone, the hostility hasn’t lagged a bit.

Now, I’m no expert on children. Frankly, I continue to have trouble surviving with my own (biological) family; creating a new one is way too tall an order. I won’t even adopt a dog because I’m afraid of being charged with some form of animal cruelty:

‘Tim! Why aren’t you feeding Malmuud?’

‘I am! In fact, he eats as often as I do!’

‘Look, you can starve yourself all you want, asshole. Leave your pet out of it!’

Calling your daughter a ‘bitch’ does strike me as a little out of bounds. Perhaps a little too transgressive even for me. This outburst wasn’t just a short lapse in judgment either. All the mommy-dearest lines were punctuated with ‘bitches.’ I’m thinking you might be able to throw these words out around your family once they’ve actually moved out of the house.

It’s funny, I honestly believed the block losing its resident drug dealer would help. It’s all too apparent now that he was harvesting marijuana in his closet for a reason. To help with paying the rent? Oh, sure, that too. To calm his nerves after verbally battering his progeny? Certainly.

Please don’t misunderstand me. The father was just as, if not more, abusive. He just managed to keep his faults a bit more general. He was the typical, abusive father; not worthy of any specifics.

Except that he used to love berating my friend for driving down the road too fast. ‘I’ve got kids! You need to slow down!!,’ he’d scream. Forgetting that we were a.) not his kids, and b.) not traveling all that fast. So we had no reason to listen to him, if we could hear him over the Overkill that my friend was always blasting. Really, what’s a quick, accidental death when compared to a tortuously prolonged murder of one’s childhood?

Don’t worry either, he repaid our indifference in kind years later (with interest!) As the neighborhood collectively prepared for Hurricane Charley’s imminent arrival, he sat still. After I had tied the basketball pole to our house, I then had to place extra-thick plywood over our windows to ward off the bricks he left in a pile in his front yard. ‘Cuz they’re bricks, and surely the hurricane couldn’t pick them up!

(Check out my totally radbadical purple car in the driveway! Not a day goes by that I don’t miss that magic, malfunctioning machine.)

A case of divine justice, his house was spared. Not even Mother Nature dares tamper with that man and his bricks.

If the future that I’m now actively imagining for these children holds true, they’ll soon be free from any filial responsibility. Becoming feral children tough enough to reach adulthood; desiring nothing more than to run rough-shod through the system whose negligence spawned them. The future children of Samoa unencumbered by familial chains.

It won’t work for the best though; it never seems to. In a case of inexplicable backwardness, my neighbor’s kids will likely grow up more attached to the mythic family image they’ve never experienced. A myth that can’t ever be; never having any real basis in reality.

These feral kids in training will instead grow up yearning for a loving family, and eventually start one (a family, at least) of their own too soon. I can only hope that in-between the shriek-fests the mother is championing condom usage to her offspring. (Provided that their old man hasn’t already sterilized them in some crazy backroom surgical procedure.) Protection is so cheap (free if you go to a clinic!) and will save you so much heartache, not to mention cash.

Remember how the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus used to pass out condoms at their shows? (Hell, they could very well still be passing out condoms. I’m just not driving to Tallahassee to find out!) That public service should be mandatory at all public events, or at public buildings. Perhaps having a helpful bowl of condoms at the front desk, instead of chocolate.